Norman Lacy - Management Educator (1982-1994)

Management Educator (1982-1994)

Norman Lacy was separated from his first wife in January 1982 and was divorced in 1983. Being removed from his young family and then losing his seat in Parliament in April 1982 presented Lacy with the darkest period of his life since the death of his mother in 1956. Living alone in The Avenue, Parkville in the neighbourhood of Ridley College where 20 years earlier he had commenced his theological studies, he wrestled with his loneliness and the loss of his family and career. It represented a personal crisis of identity, significance and purpose for which he had little support.

After parliament, Lacy developed a career in management education and consulting. At this time, he was greatly influenced by his reading on technological change in particular Barry Jones book Sleepers, Wake!. In September 1982, he joined the Management Consulting Services division of Deloitte, Haskins and Sells, one of the 'big five' chartered accounting firms. Soon afterwards, in April 1983 he bought a home in Camberwell, Victoria and moved in.

In October 1983, with the support of the firm, he took leave to study full-time at Durham Business School at Durham University in the north east of the United Kingdom. While at Durham, he was elected by his fellow students to the Board of Studies of the School. He used the position to encourage the School to establish the first information technology course for M.Sc (Management) students. His masters dissertation was on "the perceptions of information technology professionals, their understanding of managerial decision-making and the role of the decision support system designer". He graduated as Master of Science (M.Sc.Management) in 1984. After returning to Australia from Durham, Lacy was appointed Manager, Corporate Communications at the new joint venture IBIS DH&S Australia.

In June 1985, Lacy married his second wife with whom he had a son in 1998.

Soon afterwards, at the invitation of Professor Bill Walker, Lacy was appointed a Member of the Directing Staff (1985–91), and subsequently Director, International Programs (1988–91), at the Australian Management College, Mount Eliza. During the 1st 3 years of this period, he and his wife lived at 26 Bambra Street, Mount Eliza after which they moved back to their home in Camberwell. In 1988, the college invited him to attend the internationally renowned Leadership Development Program at the Center for Creative Leadership at Greensboro, North Carolina, USA to assess the program and to be trained there to deliver it under license in Australia. During the following 3 years he delivered the 6 day program at Mount Eliza on more than 24 occasions to approximately 600 Australian middle and senior level managers.

In 1990, the college appointed him to lead a team of 20 staff as Director of the China-Australia Management Centre that was established near Beijing, China. The establishment of the Centre was an Australian Government aid project in association with the Australian Management College, ACIL Australia and the China National Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Corporation (CNNC). During Lacy's tenure, the centre (based at a CNNC university at Yan Jao), where he and his wife lived from 1991 to 1994, trained 1,500 Chinese senior and middle level managers from mines, processing and manufacturing plants throughout China. The centre - whose mission was to train CNNC managers in western management theory and practice - was one of two that had been promised to the Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke on a visit to China in 1983. The other, in the iron and steel industry, was located at Wuhan.

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